9. Faith #3
Like the way my body fits against his, like it remembers the shape of him from a lifetime ago and has been waiting for the chance to slide back into place.
“This isn’t very ‘one thing at a time,’” I say quietly.
His laugh is a short puff of air against my temple.
“No,” he says. “It isn’t.”
For a while, we just stand there, staring at the snow and not looking at the thousand invisible things between us.
“I’m sorry I ruined your Christmas,” I say suddenly, the guilt popping up as a whack-a-mole I didn’t see coming.
“You didn’t,” he says immediately.
“I showed up in a ditch on your property in a situation that has the word ‘drama’ written all over it,” I say. “That feels like ruining.”
“You showed up alive,” he says. “The rest is detail.”
My throat tightens again, but this time for a different reason.
“I don’t know what to do next,” I admit, the words small. “I know I can’t stay here forever. I don’t want to impose.”
“You’re not imposing,” he says.
I almost laugh. “Your mom had to add an extra leaf to the table for me.”
“She’d add three more if she thought she could feed somebody with them,” he says. “Don’t interpret hospitality as obligation. She does this because she wants to.”
I shift in his arms, turning slowly until I’m facing him.
He lets me go enough that I can move, but his hands stay on me. The porch light casts soft gold over his face, picking out the sharp line of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, the blue of his eyes gone almost dark in the low light.
He looks… tired. Not just the physical tiredness of a long day in the snow. The deeper kind. The kind I recognize in myself when I look in unfamiliar mirrors.
But there’s more there, too.
Hope, or worry. A man standing in a doorway, not sure whether to step through or slam it shut.
“Dallas,” I say.
Just his name. A question and a prayer and an apology all wrapped up in two syllables.
His gaze drops to my mouth for the barest fraction of a second.
The world narrows.
The snow. The wind. The hum of the highway. They all fade to a dull buzz behind the roar of my own pulse.
This is a bad idea.
So, so bad.
I know that. He knows that. There are kids inside this house who think we hung the sun and the moon between us. There’s a whole town that will have Opinions with a capital O. There’s my father, a looming shadow miles away, already sharpening his knives.
I also know that I have never, in my entire life, wanted to do something as much as I want to lean those last few inches forward.
“It’s freezing out here,” he says. His breath fogs between us, a small, brief cloud. “You should go in.”
“I’m okay,” I say softly. “You’re warm.”
His mouth quirks, pained. “That’s the problem.”
There’s a beat where we could walk this back. Where we could laugh it off and step away and pretend this was just two old friends on a porch talking about storms and life and how it got so complicated.
We don’t take it.
He moves first.
Slowly. So slowly that I have time to feel every micro movement. The press of his thumb. The warmth his breath against my lips as the space between us shrinks. The way his eyes flick down then back up, checking, giving me every chance to pull away.
I don’t.
Our mouths meet.
It’s a fuse catching.
Heat sparks along my nerves, wrapping around my spine, spiraling out to the tips of my fingers. His lips are warm and firm and familiar in a way that makes my knees weak, and unfamiliar in a way that makes me dizzy.
He kisses me like he’s afraid I might vanish if he presses too hard.
Like this is fragile, and he’s holding it in the palms of his hands.
His arm slides around my waist, pulling me closer, until there’s no space between us at all.
Nothing but shared heat and the crash of our hearts against our ribs.
I make a sound I don’t recognize, half sigh, half more desperate, and my fingers are in his coat, fisting in the fabric, pulling him down. He takes the invitation and deepens the kiss.
The world tilts.
The porch railing is at my back suddenly, solid and cold, and he’s braced one hand beside my hip, his body shielding mine from the wind as if he can hold back winter itself. His tongue brushes my lower lip, tentative and asking, and I open for him without thinking.
Everything I’ve been holding in, the fear, the grief, the regret, the what ifs, rushes out and slams into everything he’s been holding back. His worry, his loneliness, his anger. The collision is dizzying.
I haven’t felt anything like this. Ever.
Not with Evan. With him, there was always calculation. Thought. A sense that kissing was a step on the correct relationship staircase. The right move at the right time with the right man.
This is… nothing like that.
This is falling.
This is losing track of where my body ends and his begins. This is realizing I’ve been starving and only just now found out what real food tastes like. This is dangerous.
His fingers slide into my hair, the rough pads of his fingertips scraping gently against my scalp. My locket is trapped between us, cool metal pressed into my sternum, a tiny anchor in the middle of all this heat.
Gran’s voice flits through my head, ridiculous and perfectly timed.
Don’t let anyone talk you out of your own heart, sugar.
My own heart is currently screaming, Yes, this. This, this, this.
Which is exactly why it’s terrifying.
“Dallas,” I breathe against his mouth, not sure if it’s encouragement or a plea for mercy.
He groans, a low, helpless sound, and kisses me again, harder this time.
I don’t know how long we stand there. It can’t be more than a minute, two at most, but it stretches. The snow keeps falling. The porch light hums. Somewhere inside, a floorboard creaks as the house adjusts itself.
Then reality catches up.
It hits both of us at once.
He goes very still.
I feel the change in him before he pulls back, the way his hand tightens in my hair, the way his breath stutters, the way tension floods through him.
His mouth breaks away from mine.
Cold rushes in between us, shocking after the warmth.
We stare at each other, breathing hard.
“Oh, hell.”